In sexual education, the sexual perversions must receive especial
attention. I must first of all refer again to two matters, of which some
account has previously been given: the influencing of congenital inborn
tendencies; and the undifferentiated sexual impulse. As regards the
former, we have to take the following data into consideration. The fact
that the indications lead us to believe that a particular sexual
perversion is inborn, need not induce us to think there is no hope of
counteracting this perversion by well-planned educational influences. I
have already written at considerable length about the undifferentiated
sexual impulse, and have shown that perverse manifestations during the
period of the undifferentiated sexual impulse do not prove that a
permanent perversion has developed. But everything possible should be
done to guard against the further development of any such perverse mode
of sexual sensibility, including sexual qualities in the wider sense of
the term. We know, for example, that many homosexual men have a tendency
to dress in girls' clothing, and many homosexual women to go about in
men's clothing, and, in both cases, to adopt the inclinations and
occupations of the opposite sex. During the period of the
undifferentiated sexual impulse, we must not attach too much importance
to the appearance of inclinations of this kind; but it would be equally
erroneous to ignore them altogether. Boys who adopt a girlish behaviour,
should not be encouraged in doing so by treating the matter as a joke.
If a boy frequently dresses up as a girl, or a girl as a boy, and if we
observe between two boys, or between two girls, an unduly intimate
friendship at an age which corresponds to the period of the
undifferentiated sexual impulse, it will be as well to modify the
children's education accordingly. A girl with such inclinations should,
for example, be thrown as much as possible into the society of lads of
an appropriate age. In the case of those who are still quite young,
there is no doubt that by the proper measures we can in part check the
development of perverse manifestations, and in part completely repress
them; notwithstanding the fact that interested agitators, whose
principal aim is to secure the repeal of Section 175 of the German
Imperial Criminal Code, maintain the contrary, and assert that
homosexual tendencies appearing in the child necessarily indicate the
future development of permanent homosexuality. Parents, tutors,
schoolmasters, and physicians, must not allow themselves to be led
astray by these agitators, who falsify the data of science. In the
interest of truth, in the interest of the children endangered by these
perversions, and in the interest of civilisation, these misstatements
must be contradicted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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